Colonization

[Phoenician]

I've decided not to buy colonization. I don't feel comfortable buying a game that is so buggy and I don't want a game with too much micro management. I think I will buy civ3 complete instead. I haven't played civ3 in like 5+years and I lost the disks...

 

[Sciguy001]

There are not too many bugs, but there is a lot of micromanagment and if you don't like that then Colonization won't be as fun.

 

[Phoenician]

ok...check this out. I was at the store and I couldn't decide for 20 minutes if I wanted Colonization or Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 (Premier Edition).
I said to myself, well Command & Conquer 3 wasn't that good but I'm a hardcore Command & Conquer: Generals player so I still have loyalty...
But colonization reminded me of Age of Empires 3 which was absolutely awful.
So it was a tie. What was the tie breaker? Red Alert 3 has a hot Russian chick on the cover while colonization had pictures of crusty old men. lol.

I bought Red Alert 3. OK, Comrades, I'll be taking a short break from Civ4 so I can C&C.

btw: Red Alert 3 premier edition cost me $70!

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

I'm a C&C fanatic too, own every game up to C&C3.
I too found C&C3 to be a let-down, and thus I didn't bother with Wrath of Kain.
Unfortunately RA3 is IMO rubbish

Though in it's defence RA3 definitely has higher production values than civ4col.

I'm just glad I paid for the cheap crap game(civ4col)!

I'm also a TotalWar fan(they have yet to release a disappointing game!), and finally bought myself TW: Medieval 2 gold - fantastic game and an absolute bargain in Game's 2 for £25 offer.
The other half of that offer was Assassin's Creed, not so fantastic but still entertaining & nice looking (the 2 qualities that seem to make successful console games )

 

[Stolen Rutters]

I voted yes, since the so-called bugs aren't that bad, and I didn't actually notice them until they were pointed out on the forum. It's fun as it is, probably worth the price for a gamer. It's much simpler than Civ4BtS. It is true that people who don't like micro-management will not like this game much, but you wouldn't be into Civ4 much in the first place if that were an issue. (For the record, I just found out about the unofficial bugfix patches myself, and plan to test one of them out when I finish my current game.)

 

[Banira]

with the modding yes. it scrapes in , but is very fun. it falls short though if you are expecting/awaiting more depth (which thankfully the modders provide). if they showed some real love for the game and polished it up, like blizzard, they could make it much better....there are tons of ideas on the forums for example that could extend the game

 

[naminator]

Like so many have said already, good game but it`s broken. Wait till official patch....whenever the lazy B****s at Firaxis can be bothered to do it, and then get the game.

 

[joequality]

Yes. Especially if you played the original.

I'm debating whether to get this game too. I loved the original, even though it took me quite some time to achieve victory. It seems that the majority of people who don't like the gameplay didn't like or play the original. Less than 30 bucks on Amazon....

 

[dalgo]

I also loved the original game and have played this new version extensively and am thoroughly enjoying it. I find that the strategy I used to win before works well here too.

 

[AncientPlayer]

Perfect? No but I didn't expect perfection.
Flaws? Yes and quite disappointing in a couple places, mainly the "quick victory is the best tactic".
Playable? Very.
Fun? Yeah, for long enough to get mods/patches to fix the worst flaws.

Bottom line is that I loved the original and I like this one. I'm about 80% satisfied with it and the unofficial patch makes it a bit more. Worth the price.

I always thought, and still do think, that Col was much less of a game for long term replay than Civ but you'd expect that with the narrow time frame, reduced units etc. But there are concepts here that are excellent and still nearly unique, like the generic citizen becoming something through experience/eduation/equipment.

Dick

 

[MonRiverMonarch]

Cool, my Yes vote just tied it at 62 votes each!

 

[ezwip]

I have only had the game one night and not much time to play it. In that short span of time several things stuck out. After playing it for a few minutes every native I met had the same identical leader with only a different name, except for Sitting Bull. My pioneers ran out of tiles to improve right away. There is not much room to build a colony, everyone is right next to each other, and the AI is overlapping me in culture very fast. I end up starving if I'm near them. The King is constantly making me kiss his ring, raise taxes, and making sucking noises.

So that was my first game. I didn't play long and reset after I realized my pioneers are my workers. . Anyways, I pull back up to the shore with my soldier and my pioneer. I plop down right next to the Indian village since I already feel crowded from last match. My rifle takes aim and the bowman is dead. I send the ship back out and wait a few turns. My rifle now has two city attack bonuses and a strength increase. The next two bowmen are short work. I buy two soldiers and begin a reign of bloody terror. I cut through the French like Dijon. The Indians just trained 5 fur guys for me so I'm stoked. I repay them spending all my cash then plopping a guy right next to their resource. They tell me they'll sell me the land for $500 bucks or something like that. I had just spent all my cash on some fisherman back in England. So out of curiosity I click ok, and it gives me the land. That's as far as I've gotten so far. I'm going to attempt to play it with Dales patch and then mod. It looks to me that this is something that will appeal to people who are familiar with the first one, but perhaps not to anyone else. Also, a few turns later all of my fisherman disappeared.

 

[wakening]

OK I give it a narrow YES vote, because I love Col 1 and learning this somewhat disappointing follow-up is interesting enough while waiting for the makers to get their fingers out and smarten up their act. We are more into management than war and bash so the various options on this game suit us well. Time to learn the game in peaceful mode before getting stroppy with anyone else. Not everyone's cup-of-tea.

The mods are excellent and thanks are due due the individuals who have taken the trouble to prepare these.

No thanks so far to Firaxis (? not a name I know, and I would not at present buy anything else from this stable.).....and their forum is hardly lively!

Good comments above by others. If you can get the game at a reasonable price (it is not expensive as far as I can see) it is worth looking at.

 

[ezwip]

After using Dale's mod I think it's a great game... once it is reprogrammed. At least this is an option. If not for that I would rate this game a 0 and a complete failure since it's barely playable. With Dale tweaking it this game is 8-10. I think they should go ahead and pay Dale a whole bunch of money to fix it. If they are making $25 a pop off of us and we all use his mod then he should get a cut. The game is crap without it. If they want to repackage this and tell people it's an almost complete game if you recode it then that's fair. Otherwise pay the people that make it a complete game and don't develop a scheme to not pay coders. That's what they've done they released it incomplete knowing the community would complete it. I think that's totally whack. Sure I can build someone a car that sucks ass and they can completely rebuild it with a new engine, new rear end, new exhaust, new brakes, and a new transmission. This only appeals to specific types of people that have those skills. You don't package it for sale to everyone. That's what I think. You give Dale a couple of graphic artists so he doesn't have to reuse the crap from Col1, listens to feedback, responds accordingly, and you've got a best seller. Would that really have cost that much more in overhead for them to hire one to three people to tweak it in their spare time to release official patches, instead of just repackaging their ideas months down the road? It boggles the mind it really does. I purchased Civ IV, Warlords, Beyond the Sword, and now Colonization. That's about $200 from me alone. This is the best they can do? Did they spend all of our money on crack or did the CEO take a $50 million dollar bonus? How about a federal bailout package to help with their next incomplete release?

ps even with Dales patch I conquered and raised my entire continent with only the original soldier that sailed over at the beginning

 

[OctavianFlu]

If you like CIV IV then don't buy this game.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

If you liked CIV IV or Colonization then don't buy this game.

Haha, that's the most accurate & succinct review yet!
Perhaps a slight modification though

 

[Wheldrake]

This is absurd.
There are no bugs in Civ4Col. The game plays well straight out of the box. Doesn't crash.

Yes, it isn't very challenging, out of the box. Yes, it's far, far better with a good mod like AoD2. And yes, you have to love micromanagement to get off on this game. It's a micro-micro-micromanagement paradise. It's nothing like a real-time simulation. Nothing at all. But it's very cool for those who are into the micromanagement side of things, and who understand that DLing a good mod can improve a game a thousand-fold.

YMMV, --- Wheldrake

 

[Souron]

I don't know what you guys are complaining about. I just got the game for Christmas, and I'm really enjoying it. Ok, its not as great as Civilization III and IV, but what is?

Also, to say the game has a lot of micro management isn't right. The game is about managing a trade network, down to individual resources! Micromanagement is what its all about.

 

[Alex Encandar]

I got it for 30$ at a local gamestop, that 20$ reduction in price made the decision an easy one for me, glad I made it too.

It's a great game.

 

[Lightwave]

I did not play the first Colonization, so I have no comparison of features in my mind. With that said, I voted no overall. It's nice for temporary diversion and a diversion that explores that genre and time span, but it lacks in some important features that make a "great" game.

I like the new graphics especially the water effects. The trading is interesting at first, but it wears thin after a while. As mentioned elsewhere, the natives at some point will want guns which I tend to not want to give them. Also, they quickly started wanting to pay less for goods than I could both sell them for in Europe or buy them from Europe, so in several cases I gave up trying to trade with them because it wasn't worth the trouble of transporting goods from somewhere only to find that I was losing money.

A major sticking point is that the game is too heavy on micromanagement for me. I like the specialized colonist professions, but that ends up being yet more micromanagement because the game does always not properly place the settlers in their best trade.

You can automate the wagon trains to carry prominently produced goods back and forth. So the developers tried to provide a means to automate the resource movement, but the wagon train routes still fall short on the ease of use side because I can't always remember which wagon routes I have assigned between which cities. This is a little exacerbated because of the warehouse storage limits since the wagon will dump the load even if the warehouse is "full" of that good. (Someone please correct me if I missed some features on some of this.) So, even if you automate some features like taking food to a low food city or coats to your main port city, you can end up losing resources. Simple things like transporting guns and horses etc. to each city is tedious for me at least.

My personal rating would be: C-. I played the beginning of several games and one game to an advanced stage. But I ended up cheating to win it because I wanted to see the ending, but it was not fun enough to fight through all of the micromanagement to win. I would just as soon start up another game of CivIV.